The geographic organizing aspect of GIS has been part of the thinking from the beginning, but now factor in the impact of the web. Web GIS provides an online infrastructure for making maps and geographic information available throughout an organization, across a community, and openly on the web. This new vision of Web GIS fully complements, integrates, and extends the work of existing GIS professionals.
Web access to data layers is straightforward: every layer has a web address (a URL) making it easy to locate and share online. Because every layer is georeferenced, Web GIS becomes a system for integration that facilitates the access and recombination of layers from multiple providers into your own apps. This is significant for the millions of GIS professionals worldwide who are building layers that serve their individual purposes. By simply sharing these layers back into the online GIS ecosystem, they are adding to a comprehensive and growing GIS for the world. Each day, this resource grows richer and is tapped by ArcGIS users and shared on the web. ...continued ...